“Come in.” Vinyl Scratch looked up from her music sheet. “Lyra, finally!”

The mint unicorn responded to the comment with a smirk. “Says the always late DJ.”

“Late? I’m never late.”

“Can you name one of your performance you started on time?”

Vinyl stared at the ceiling, looking for what should have been an easy answer. When she found none, she looked at her friend with a fixed grin. “Anyway, we’re not here to talk about my record of punctuality. Do you have what I asked?”

“Well…” It was Lyra’s turn to smile stupidly, trying to avoid Vinyl’s gaze. “I’ve been a bit busy, you know, and —”

Vinyl rolled her eyes. “Lyra, come on! It’s not that hard.”

“Not that hard? I’m a musician, I write music, Vinyl, not poetry. Why don’t you ask the changeling?”

“He’s not a changeling. Besides, he is kinda busy at the moment.”

“So he can be busy but I can’t?” said Lyra.

“That’s not the same and you know it,” shouted Vinyl. “Besides, I didn’t ask you to write a masterpiece, just a little something to accompany the music. It’s for the Music & Song Discovery, for Celestia’s sake. The performance is tonight! Everypony is counting on us, and I — ”

“Vinyl.” Both unicorns turned their heads towards where the voice of Vinyl’s roommate came. “Be a dear and don’t yell this early, would you?”

“But Octi,” whined Vinyl. “Lyra didn’t do what I requested, and now the entire performance goes out the window.”

The earth pony put a calming hoof on Vinyl’s shoulder. “Don’t get yourself so worked up. If I remember correctly, this is supposed to be a surprise.”

I got hit hard with a case of RL last round, and wasn't able to follow up with this promptly, so I thought I'd put this here where everyone will see it rather than bury it at the end of a dead thread.

I owe Ranmilia a public apology for my post during the dispute over poetry last round. I stand by the substance of my arguments, but I made them in a disrespectful way. All of us here want to make the Writeoffs a better place; it's obvious — and should have been obvious — that Ranmilia was acting from that impulse as well, regardless of our disagreements. To take an obvious example, he's been consistently providing detailed, insightful critique on a wide range of entries; nobody does that without a lot of investment in the success of the Writeoffs and their participants, and I want to take a minute to thank him for that effort.

We've talked a little bit privately, and a little bit via Discord, about topics including poetry entries. RogerDodger also joined the public conversation in at least one point, to clarify that different formats were not intended to be banned/discouraged by the rules. (Supposedly there was going to be a change in rule wording accordingly; I don't know if that's happened.) I don't think that's the end of the conversation, but there also hasn't been a good place to have that conversation in an inclusive (and archiveable) way. I still disagree with the argument that poetry and prose are not comparable, but that's a topic that should be revisited later; I also don't want to ignore the point that was made about the additional difficulty of reading poetry if English is not your native language (since I know that we have many regular participants for whom that is the case).

Hopefully we can set aside a forum thread here (or on FIMFiction?) to let everyone weigh in on ways to mitigate and/or solve that — I really don't want to start that back up here, but it's a conversation that needs to be had. A meta-discussion forum also would give us a place to pitch formal ideas for changes in format or rules without clogging up the content threads.

But anyway.

This is an apology post, not an attempt to start those conversations. So: Ranmilia, I'm sorry. I took umbrage with the implication that poetry was an insult to authors of prose submissions, which on further discussion was not the intended implication of your post. I also got upset at what I saw as an attempt to enforce a nonexistent rule at odds with the competition's history, and that's been talked out. You deserved better than my anger, and I appreciate the contributions you've made here, and I'm sorry I didn't assume good faith.

My apology said, I probably won't participate this round for reasons that have nothing to do with that. I tend to skip MLP minific rounds in order to give myself more time for non-Writeoff stuff (since I try to make a point of participating in everything else). Enjoy the round, everyone, and I look forward to reading some cool entries at whatever point I catch up!

>>horizonFwiw, I don't buy the premise that it's too hard for non-native speakers to judge the poetry. I don't see how it'd be easy for them to judge the humor, or idioms, or imagery either. Yet nobody complains about those. It's just poetry getting singled out again.

I am by no means a literary expert or critic, just some guy who has fun reading and occasionally writing about ponies, but one of the most memorable past entries I read was a lengthy poem and I'd be sad if people decided not to submit them.

>>horizonI didn't say it last time cause I didn't wanna get messed up in that stuff, but I actually found myself enjoying that debate you wrote about whether or not poetry is fiction. I, personally, find I don't like reading it because it requires more thought than regular stories, but that's why abstaining is an option.

Also, I'm up for friendly debates and such things in a proper location any day if you want.

Poetry does not work like prose. Prose follow rules that transcend language barrier. A good plot, good execution, imagery… that does not depend on the language you use. Humour can be hard to perceive, but relies more or less on universal tropes. Idioms you can check out.

Poetry, however, is meant to be read aloud. Poetry works because of images it conjures up, okay, but above all because of rhythm and sounds, like music. Which means: you’ve to master speech down to the tiniest details.

In other words:

* You have to know how to pronounce every single word: where are the traps: When does ‘read’ rhyme with ‘steed’? Errr… 'Done' and 'gone' do not rhyme? Gosh. 'Mother' and 'bother' neither? Ouch! 'Above' and 'drove' do not? But 'stir' and 'purr' do? WTF! Because the spelling will not tell you that. Check that famous poem to figure out how hard it can be: the Chaos by Trenité

* You have to know on which syllable does the tonic accent fall. What the hell is a tonic accent, every French guy will tell you? French has no tonic accent. Why does it shift between 'economy' and 'economics'? 'Photograph' and 'photographer'? How can I know that? Urgh. So WTF is that iambic thing? How does it work? French poetry is based on syllable count and rhyme alone.

Native speakers learn how to speak first and how to write next. It’s the opposite for non-native ones. And that makes every work based on oral communication really hard for us. Some people can write perfect English, but amongst them, how many speak English as perfectly?

>>MonokerasI think that you can still appreciate poetry without reading it aloud, but I agree that you'd miss something. And it's much harder to evaluate.

Personally I am not a fan of poetry, but I am not a fan of technical reports or game instructions, and we had both in the past as accepted entries.I think I wouldn't mind reading poetry but the risk is it may not receive high notes.Basically the point is how to evaluate poetry entries.

>>moonwhisperI mean, non-natives could assess poetry, but it’s such a hassle that every pleasure is lost. Let’s count the feet. Does that iambic thing stand? No. Why? No idea. Oh shit, maybe that’s a word I mispronounce. Let’s check it out. Opens dictionary. Ah yes, I misplaced the tonic accent. What’s that strange rhyme? Opens dictionary again. Oops, choir rhymes with acquire alright. My bad, the verse is okay. Let’s get to the next one. And so on. It’s like trying to read Shakespeare at the end of your first year of ESL. You trudge through, instead of enjoying the music and rhythm of the words.

A couple of years ago, when I used to write fics riddled with stilted words, someone (Trick?) told me that forcing people to open their dictionary more than twice in any given fiction ruined the immersion and therefore the pleasure to read. That’s mainly what poetry does to us. We get overwhelmed with technicalities.

I won't deny that there are plenty of poems designed to be read aloud: poets like Yeats put a great emphasis on it, as well as the whole movement of spoken-word poetry (like slam poetry) that mix writing and performance all up into one, not to mention the fact that poetry is a direct descendant of an oral tradition of storytelling. But to say that poetry as a medium is intended to be read aloud is to ignore the wealth of poetry that, to put it bluntly, isn't.

There are so many poetic devices that are built around the concept of mise en page. For example, enjambment in free verse poetry is something that works only because of how words appear on the page, a quality that is totally lost when reading the poem aloud. Many poets (myself included) use left, right, and centre alignment to create various effects, something that would be totally lost in a bog-standard reading*. And let's not forget the entire movement of concrete poetry! These are all really cool poetic devices that you can talk about without even knowing how to pronounce the words that are using them.

It's also worth noting that metre and rhyme are not, by any means, the most important aspects of poetry. I speak about metre a lot when I talk about poetry because it's something I know about, and I believe I can provide useful and detailed feedback about it in a workshop context—that by no means suggests that it is the most important part of the poem, but just the part I think I can be most useful in talking about! And yes, metre and rhyme can add to the meaning of a piece... but often, they're just constraints the poet has used to help foster creativity. Honestly, my advice to anyone struggling with getting to grips with poetry, native speaker or not, is to ignore those two things: they're absolutely not required to understand and criticise a poem, though I will admit that understanding them does, in some cases, help to explain some word choices that might otherwise not make much sense.

To insist that metre and pronunciation issues are enough to make all poetry nigh-impossible to read is to ignore the impossibly diverse nature of poetic devices, and to ignore some of poetry's most defining features. I shan't say that your struggle with those things is not a valid one (it absolutely is valid!), but I think that focusing on those things to the extent that you ignore other, more palatable features of poetry is doing the form, and yourself, a disservice.

However, because I recognise that some people really do struggle with forms of poetry that are meant to be read aloud (or at least, those that are not ill-suited to being read aloud) in these contests, I'd like to make an offer: I'll read them aloud for you. If anyone at any time wants to hear someone read a writeoff poem, I am more than happy to record myself doing so and to share it about. If people think that will help them in understanding the form, it's the least I can do to try and make a medium I adore more accessible.

*I recognise that you could replicate this effect with multiple voices positioned differently, or some other staging quirk, but then we're pushing the boundaries into dramatisation and direction, which is an entirely different art form by itself. Isn't it cool how all these forms are connected? :D

>Autumn is for ApplesFor some reason, when I first read this at a glance, I thought it said Autumn is for Nipples.And my first thought was, "Uhhhh... Well, I guess the weather *is* getting colder, and all..." XD

Once Upon a Time, Mike Pence, Princess of Equestria, [REDACTED] Government Subsidized Outrage Tabloids Beyond the Grave, Bending the Bridge Back to Basics–The Red and the Black Tunnel of Love.

Those Who Wait Roll for Initiative. The Long Game! Moments, Divided. An Impromptu Visitor That Is Not Dead–The Lady who Knows Everything. A Different Side of Me! Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

Not All Heroes Wear Capes. Me Among The Mighty Monsters of Horror, Where the WiFi is Usually Free. Living with Lycanthropy: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. It’s the Halloween Spirit! Autumn is for Apples.

The Cart Before the Horse. It’s Just a Figure of Speech. And Then, Things Got Worse. Night in the Woods; Don’t Look Behind You… That’s One Way to Start Your Morning. What The Heart Craves After the Storm, Among the Clouds. Wind Beneath my Wings, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

>>MonokerasAs somepony who has worked with language models, I find this fascinating.

There's a couple of animators online who are Swedish and speak amusing 'Swenglish'-sounding English in their cartoons as a result. They know English near-perfectly but speaking English isn't as simple as knowing how the words should sound.

For example, in Pony and Boy (which you should really see anyway), the words are all pronounced correctly more or less, but slight differences in inflection make many of them sound all wrong.

(But really this is just an excuse to make people watch a beautiful love story about a pony and his boy.)

Sorry bronies. I have two stories brewing, but I have too much depression to complete or submit them tonight. I can't even describe them because it would take too many words, but that tends to be the case when I write things that are supposed to fit into 750-word spaces.

Maybe I'll cannibalize them for later. Best of luck to the rest of you!

Eh, my story idea wasn't panning out. I'll just keep it to myself and write it out a little bit more. Since I can't think of anything else to jot, I'm going to sit this round out, but I'll be sure to check out and review some of the other stories posted.

In case anyone doesn't feel like puzzling this one out, I'm gonna put what I've figured out from this one in a comment here. It's a pretty cool puzzle, though, so I urge people to try and do it. Avoid the spoiler-text if you want a fun puzzle!

The body of the text has the following hidden message (and the way it's hidden was pretty neat, too!):

"I didn't mean for it to end this way. Even if I don't deserve to be forgiven, please remember me, and know that no matter what happens next, I will always love you, Lady Flurry Heart."

And, according to a cryptogram solver (because I'm patient enough to decode the entire poem, but not the title?), the title means:

"Of Winter Foolishness Borne Aloft on the Craft and Tuft"

I don't know if there's more hidden in this one, but I couldn't see anything hidden in the source text. Regardless of whether I've missed something or not, that was a fun little puzzle, author. Thanks a bunch!

I'll probably have some thoughts on the poem itself, and the story it's telling, later in the week. Nice use of... whatever the exact opposite of blank verse is called?

That was strange. Not poorly written by any means, but absolutely strange. Not exactly a fan of the content particarly if those were humans. Wish I could be less biased but this story definitely isn’t for me because of said content, unfortunately. The story starts off really strong and hooks you in really well but the actual meat of the story definitely leaves something to be desired. author, of the characters in the middle are ponies, make it more obvious. If they’re humans, scrap that and make them ponies.

Not really with Regi on this one. The prose is strong, but the text is pretty boring, and choosing an epistolary form strengthen the telli-ness of it. While the idea is zany, the execution quenches the zaniness instead of making it shine. It’s padding, padding, padding around the core concept.

Interesting turn at the end. The story was well written, and I’m actually quite pleased with the direction you took it. Was certain you were going to go into a rewrite of Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 3000 but sad and I raised my eyebrows (in quite a good way) when that ending came around.

Oh man, the atmosphere of this story was so comfy. The story itself really doesn't have the most substance, but this is an arcless SoL that doesn't need to have any more substance than the atmosphere. I've got a little bit of a soft spot for these, so I ended up enjoying this story regardless.

Hmm. It almost sounds like Twilight is fighting alongside Tempest, which doesn't make any sense. I do like the idea of trying the sirens into it somehow, though. Better to reuse something you have than add a new element. Also, what happened to Fluttershy?

There were some stylistic points that threw me, though. For one, there was an unusual level of personification - I had to read the stove section twice, because I thought at first that a phoenix might be convalescing there.

More passive voice than I'd prefer. Taking the text at face value, the things were basically cooking themselves. Obviously that wasn't the case, and it's a valid writing style, but it was hard not to notice.

Still the quiet and peace were very true to Fluttershy, and it was a pleasant and relaxing read.

Haven't seen the movie, but there are interesting ideas here anyways. The tone of 'attacking with depth charges' felt like it was at odds with 'winning through friendship' that the ending seemed to endorse. Nice prose though.